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THE road to a harmonious culture, based on what human affairs (ambitions, conflicts, creative activities, love, etc) Guyanese encountered, or rather, allowed themselves to encounter, during those decades from the 1930s to the 70s when cinemas flourished around Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, its sea coast and upriver towns laid the basis for the beginning of a new, vibrant, contemporary Guyanese culture. Though inspired by cinema-going, this contemporary culture is no longer dependent on the existence of cinemas, but more on many of the films those cinemas once showed. Good films do not die as time passes; rather, they show how durable they are by their preserved relevance to our contemporary lives.
Cinematic local relevance
The emphasis is on facing and solving the human problems that arose from people born here not having a common basic source of human values, because they were from ethnic groups transferred to Guyana from elsewhere in the world.
Every ethnic group had its own cultural umbilical cord, but now, unlike their own ancestral experience, they had to contend every day with different types of humans not of their colour, traditions, customs, religion, ideology etc. Not having much in common did not mean people disliked each other; they had basic respect for each other, which made the social business of life — working together, being educated in schools together, and especially gathering in cinemas together to see films etc — activities the very progress and contentment of their Guyanese colony/nation depended on.
But it takes more than basic normal human respect, manners, etiquette, an politeness to make a contemporary culture of mostly shared and accepted human values, since such a social culture involves a more truthful or frank encounter with one’s feelings, knowledge, reasoning, logic, and pleasure, which leads to a meaningful, a useful and functional Guyanese culture involving all the descendents of resident ethnicities.
Cinematic culture
Achieving such a useful and relevant contemporary culture, based in the present, demands some common cultural experience that gives us more than the naturally inherited culture our ethnicity could provide, since such original ethnic cultures were not accustomed to experiencing life with all the various ethnicities (and their beliefs) which came to comprise the basis of a contemporary Guyanese culture.
Guyanese cinemas, and particularly their American/Hollywood films, provided a content and style which, in many ways, brought all Guyanese who viewed them face-to-face with both their historical and contemporary social problems.
Guyanese had no popular contemporary cultural forms of their own, which had developed locally to reflect and cover the circumstances they were going through, like American/Hollywood films in particular did. The reason for this is because, as a small isolated colony, then Independent nation, it lacked the economic innovation, technical skills and necessary supportive educated audience which produced and supported the making and mass distribution of films and book publishing.
However, because the American/Hollywood film industry first tackled the problems arising from different inherited cultures and races put together both historically, and even recently, on a new landscape, they provided the emotional and cultural solution to historically inherited and ongoing social and cultural issues relevant to the progressive coming of Guyana into the modern age as well.
Quality films before cinemas
But what does the word ‘cinema’ really mean? Not simply a place, a building or auditorium to attend films, but the films that one attends there. It is the films’ quality and their social relevance which make cinemas valuable; not the cinema building. A perfectly beautiful building can show films of no relevant social or constructive value to the nation and human communities where people reside.
The history of cinemas in Guyana provides a beautiful example of their social and personal human relevance to the neighbourhood and other communities they served. This is how the rapid influence of progressive civilized reasoning and behaviour, the pleasure of morals and the consequence — the karma or cause-and- effect of our actions — which cautions us came to morally constitute a contemporary Guyanese culture.
Architecture
Even the brilliant local vintage architecture of Guyanese cinemas, most of them wooden, reflected their architects’ awareness of a Guyanese environment enhanced by cinema windows which opened at dusk to deliver the enormous pleasure of looking at a big screen filled with scenes from the outer world; the foreign world, while through the narrow spaces between open cinema windows we could often glimpse the mauve Guyanese evening sky with the shadowy heads of coconut and other large trees, and often feel the cool breeze of an incoming tide as well.
This is particularly relevant to cinemas like Camp Street’s ‘PLAZA’, Vlissengen Road’s ‘RIALTO/DOREEN/LIBERTY’, and Alexander Street’s ‘HOLLYWOOD’ in Kitty; three cinemas which faced east, and whose left side row of windows caught the nearby sea breeze. Kitty’s ‘HOLLYWOOD’, being the closest sea side village cinema, also caught those special qualities of Guyana’s rustic ethnic neighbourhoods being shared with the distant foreign features on the cinema screen, so that sitting in the cinema, one often smelt the aroma of curry coming from neighbourhood kitchens, or heard the bleating of sheep and mooing of cows being driven back home to their pens in village yards.
Other cinemas in Georgetown, like the unforgettable ‘METROPOLE’ with its hectic and conducive downtown excitement of nearby restaurants, businesses, etc, or ‘GLOBE’, a hundred yards away, facing north, with the most innovative modern concrete architectural design and the greatest balcony, like a Greek amphitheatre, were cinemas where international films of the highest quality were shown.
The towering ‘EMPIRE’, facing south on Middle Street, caught land breeze from the east, providing its Balcony, House, and Stalls with spacious comfort in a quiet residential neighbourhood. We are speaking here of when these cinemas were in their best shape, both structurally and culturally, between the 1930s and 70s, because of the high quality of entertainment they provided for half-a-century.
Defining contemporary culture
During those decades, it would have been an insult to tell Guyanese of East Indian, African, Chinese, Portuguese, or any other racial or cultural descent, that because of their specific ethnic origin they should only care about or pay attention to films from India, Africa, China, Portugal, England etc, because that was where they originated, and the root of their true culture lay. Guyanese cinemas and their majority American/Hollywood films influenced contemporary Guyanese culture because people can share the same precious and pleasurable cultural values based only on human feelings, human flaws, shared knowledge, romantic love, etc, despite the difference of their skin color, corporeal features, hair textures, economic status, or original country and culture of origin.
Cinematic local relevance
The emphasis is on facing and solving the human problems that arose from people born here not having a common basic source of human values, because they were from ethnic groups transferred to Guyana from elsewhere in the world.
Every ethnic group had its own cultural umbilical cord, but now, unlike their own ancestral experience, they had to contend every day with different types of humans not of their colour, traditions, customs, religion, ideology etc. Not having much in common did not mean people disliked each other; they had basic respect for each other, which made the social business of life — working together, being educated in schools together, and especially gathering in cinemas together to see films etc — activities the very progress and contentment of their Guyanese colony/nation depended on.
But it takes more than basic normal human respect, manners, etiquette, an politeness to make a contemporary culture of mostly shared and accepted human values, since such a social culture involves a more truthful or frank encounter with one’s feelings, knowledge, reasoning, logic, and pleasure, which leads to a meaningful, a useful and functional Guyanese culture involving all the descendents of resident ethnicities.
Cinematic culture
Achieving such a useful and relevant contemporary culture, based in the present, demands some common cultural experience that gives us more than the naturally inherited culture our ethnicity could provide, since such original ethnic cultures were not accustomed to experiencing life with all the various ethnicities (and their beliefs) which came to comprise the basis of a contemporary Guyanese culture.
Guyanese cinemas, and particularly their American/Hollywood films, provided a content and style which, in many ways, brought all Guyanese who viewed them face-to-face with both their historical and contemporary social problems.
Guyanese had no popular contemporary cultural forms of their own, which had developed locally to reflect and cover the circumstances they were going through, like American/Hollywood films in particular did. The reason for this is because, as a small isolated colony, then Independent nation, it lacked the economic innovation, technical skills and necessary supportive educated audience which produced and supported the making and mass distribution of films and book publishing.
However, because the American/Hollywood film industry first tackled the problems arising from different inherited cultures and races put together both historically, and even recently, on a new landscape, they provided the emotional and cultural solution to historically inherited and ongoing social and cultural issues relevant to the progressive coming of Guyana into the modern age as well.
Quality films before cinemas
But what does the word ‘cinema’ really mean? Not simply a place, a building or auditorium to attend films, but the films that one attends there. It is the films’ quality and their social relevance which make cinemas valuable; not the cinema building. A perfectly beautiful building can show films of no relevant social or constructive value to the nation and human communities where people reside.
The history of cinemas in Guyana provides a beautiful example of their social and personal human relevance to the neighbourhood and other communities they served. This is how the rapid influence of progressive civilized reasoning and behaviour, the pleasure of morals and the consequence — the karma or cause-and- effect of our actions — which cautions us came to morally constitute a contemporary Guyanese culture.
Architecture
Even the brilliant local vintage architecture of Guyanese cinemas, most of them wooden, reflected their architects’ awareness of a Guyanese environment enhanced by cinema windows which opened at dusk to deliver the enormous pleasure of looking at a big screen filled with scenes from the outer world; the foreign world, while through the narrow spaces between open cinema windows we could often glimpse the mauve Guyanese evening sky with the shadowy heads of coconut and other large trees, and often feel the cool breeze of an incoming tide as well.
This is particularly relevant to cinemas like Camp Street’s ‘PLAZA’, Vlissengen Road’s ‘RIALTO/DOREEN/LIBERTY’, and Alexander Street’s ‘HOLLYWOOD’ in Kitty; three cinemas which faced east, and whose left side row of windows caught the nearby sea breeze. Kitty’s ‘HOLLYWOOD’, being the closest sea side village cinema, also caught those special qualities of Guyana’s rustic ethnic neighbourhoods being shared with the distant foreign features on the cinema screen, so that sitting in the cinema, one often smelt the aroma of curry coming from neighbourhood kitchens, or heard the bleating of sheep and mooing of cows being driven back home to their pens in village yards.
Other cinemas in Georgetown, like the unforgettable ‘METROPOLE’ with its hectic and conducive downtown excitement of nearby restaurants, businesses, etc, or ‘GLOBE’, a hundred yards away, facing north, with the most innovative modern concrete architectural design and the greatest balcony, like a Greek amphitheatre, were cinemas where international films of the highest quality were shown.
The towering ‘EMPIRE’, facing south on Middle Street, caught land breeze from the east, providing its Balcony, House, and Stalls with spacious comfort in a quiet residential neighbourhood. We are speaking here of when these cinemas were in their best shape, both structurally and culturally, between the 1930s and 70s, because of the high quality of entertainment they provided for half-a-century.
Defining contemporary culture
During those decades, it would have been an insult to tell Guyanese of East Indian, African, Chinese, Portuguese, or any other racial or cultural descent, that because of their specific ethnic origin they should only care about or pay attention to films from India, Africa, China, Portugal, England etc, because that was where they originated, and the root of their true culture lay. Guyanese cinemas and their majority American/Hollywood films influenced contemporary Guyanese culture because people can share the same precious and pleasurable cultural values based only on human feelings, human flaws, shared knowledge, romantic love, etc, despite the difference of their skin color, corporeal features, hair textures, economic status, or original country and culture of origin.
